


Like an ember coaxed to life

by HelveticaBrown



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 14:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15842853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelveticaBrown/pseuds/HelveticaBrown
Summary: Emma Swan is one of the rare few born without a soulmark, a half without a whole. And Regina Mills had a soulmate but lost him, which is why it couldn't possibly mean anything when Emma's irresistibly drawn to her.Written for Swan Queen Week 11 - Soulmates, Day 4 - Soulmarks





	Like an ember coaxed to life

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely wasn't going to write anything for Swan Queen Week, because hello exams next week. But this kind of lodged itself in my head and decided it wasn't going away, so I bashed it out in a few hours. It's probably kind of messy and underdone, but hopefully a few of you enjoy it.

* * *

“Hurry up and get dressed. And,” Red says, eyeing her critically, “make sure you put on something nice.”

Emma groans and pulls the covers back over her head. It’s midnight and she’s been up since seven this morning thanks to the stupidly early class she’d made the mistake of signing up for. 

“Why on earth would I want to get out of my warm, not particularly comfortable bed?” Emma asks from beneath the covers, which even now, her insane roommate is wrestling from her grip.

“We’re going to a Magic Users Society meeting,” Red says, as if that’s supposed to explain everything.

Having lost the battle against Red for custody of her bedcovers, Emma sits up and fold her arms across her chest. “There’s no way I’m getting out of bed to go watch some nerds do card tricks and try to pull rabbits out of hats.”

“Not that kind of magic,” Red says, as though she’s a particularly obtuse child.

Emma looks at her sideways. “Like… mushrooms that make you hear in colour kind of magic? ‘Cos I’m not really into that kind of thing.”

“Not that kind of magic either,” Red says, exasperation colouring her voice.

“So what’s so special about this Magic thingy, then?”

“It’s the best place on campus to pick up girls. And they have the best parties.” And that sounds more like Red. “What? There’s no harm going out and having some fun. I mean, I’m not going to meet my soulmate sitting at home drinking tea and watching Jeopardy,” Red says defensively, responding to a criticism Emma’s pretty sure she hadn’t levelled.

“I didn’t say that.”

Red sighs. “I know. But you know some people don’t meet their soulmate until they’re like seventy or something. If that’s me, I don’t want to have wasted my life waiting around for some kind of miracle to happen.”

Personally, Emma thinks meeting your soulmate at seventy wouldn’t be so bad. At least it would mean having one. She looks down at the unblemished skin of her hands, which leads to similarly bare skin on her arms and everywhere else and wonders, not for the first time, what it would be like to actually have a soulmark, to have that certainty that someone is out there waiting for you to find them.

“You still haven’t given me a good reason to get out of my pyjamas and leave the room.”

“Maybe you’ll meet your soulmate there.”

“Maybe if I had one,” Emma says pointedly.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Red’s grovelling now and Emma can almost feel her duvet being restored to its rightful place around her shoulders. But she’s rejoicing a moment too soon, because even putting her foot far enough into her mouth for digestion to start happening isn’t enough to derail Red. She’s like a dog with a bone when she’s like this and Emma can see her gearing up for her next assault.

“You know, you kind of owe me for that assignment I helped you with.”

And okay, Red has her there, because a third of the class had ended up failing that assignment and Emma had made it out just by the skin of her teeth.

“Fine,” she grumbles, throwing aside the remaining bedcovers and stomping across the room to the closet.

“Not the flannel,” Red says, just as she’s about to take her pyjama top off.

She sits back on the edge of the bed and waits for Red to pick her an acceptable outfit, because she knows nothing she chooses is going to be up to scratch.

*****

“That’s Regina Mills,” Red says, gesturing in the direction of the woman Emma had been apparently not-so-subtly checking out since they’d arrived. “She’s the Society’s president.” And that makes sense, because there’s a crowd of people around her, every one of them looking like they want a piece of her.

Regina Mills is a particular kind of attractive that Emma doesn’t quite know how to put into words. What she does know is that Regina is impeccably dressed, obviously popular, and way out of Emma’s league. Still, it doesn’t stop her from looking.

“Her soulmate died the summer before she started here. Rumour has it, she broke things off with him at her mother’s insistence and he rode his motorbike out into a storm and crashed.” Red shares this snippet with more than a little glee, presumably because gossip this juicy doesn’t come along every day, and Emma, still so new to Storybrooke Academy is yet to hear most of the best stories the college has to offer.

Emma looks down at the cup of wine in her hand. It’s better than the usual stuff you find at college parties and she takes a sip of it and then another.

She wonders what that must be like, to have something so precious and to lose it, knowing that there would never be another to fill that void. She supposes it must be worse than knowing that there was never anyone for her in the first place.  

There’s a little boy out there somewhere turning four, any day now, who is proof of how little regard the universe has for an unmatched pair. He’d been taken from her, hidden away, so the evidence of his father’s misdeeds would never come to light, because having a child with someone other than your soulmate is just about the worst thing you can do. Maybe even worse than murder, in some people’s eyes.

When she looks over at Regina again, this time Regina’s looking back at her. Emma frowns and looks over her shoulder, expecting to see someone else behind her, but she’s pretty much leaning up against the wall at this point.

When she turns back, Regina is smirking and it’s like the crowd of people surrounding her are suddenly invisible, because Emma seems to have her undivided attention.

Emma pushes up off the wall, deciding to test that theory, because she still can’t quite believe that this is really happening. She makes her way across the room slowly and every time she checks, Regina is still watching her.

She stops beside the drinks table, because she’s going to need a little more liquid courage if she’s going to do this. She pours herself a shot of tequila and knocks it back, wincing at the peppery heat of it.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Regina says from behind her shoulder, and Emma doesn’t even need to turn around to know it’s her, because of course she’d sound like that.

Emma turns around, swallowing fruitlessly, her mouth suddenly parched. “Em… ah, Emma Swan,” she finally manages to get out much to Regina’s obvious amusement.

“Em-ma Swan,” Regina says, drawing her name out in not quite the same way _she_ had when she’d stumbled over it. Regina’s voice burns her through, about a thousand times more potent than the tequila shot she’d just had. “Interesting.”

She reaches out and traces Emma’s lips with a finger and Emma can feel her heart hammering so hard inside her chest she’s afraid it’s going to break through it. A moment later, that finger’s being replaced by Regina’s lips, just a quick, almost-chaste brush that doesn’t do anything to slow her heart down.

“You taste like cheap tequila,” Regina says and Emma can’t help blushing. “Lucky for you, I like tequila.” The predatory grin that steals across her face has Emma reaching for a support that isn’t there, because she feels like her knees are going to give way any minute now.

And then, she’s being led away from the party and any hope she had of holding herself together is soon well and truly gone.

She sneaks in just before dawn, trying not to wake Red, even though chances are she’s in someone else’s bed. She’s not, though, and she sits up when Emma trips over a shoe in the middle of the floor, watching her make her way across the room to her bed.

“You should be careful, Emma. There are a lot of other things I’ve heard about Regina Mills and some of them aren’t exactly cool.”

Emma hears her, but she’s too drunk on the memory of Regina’s hands, her mouth, her skin to pay Red much attention. She slides under the covers and sinks into a deep, satisfied sleep.

*****

Regina doesn’t usually let her use her mouth, but tonight she pushes her head down between her legs, fingers woven tight in her hair, holding her there so that every one of her senses narrows down to Regina and her pleasure.

And this is what Emma’s been missing all her life, the taste of her, the way her hips buck, frantic and wanton, and her fingers twist, needy and urgent in Emma’s hair until it’s almost painful. Regina fucks herself on Emma’s tongue and everything about this is so good, so perfect that she doesn’t want it to ever end.

But end it must, because soon, Regina’s shuddering beneath her, drawing taut like a bowstring and then collapsing back onto the bed. Emma brings her down gently from her climax, kisses the soft skin of Regina’s inner thigh, even though this isn’t supposed to be anything more than sex. And that’s when she notices it.

She tries to push it aside, tries to lose herself in the feel of Regina snuggled into her side, soft in a way that she usually isn’t. Her traitorous mind won’t stop whirring away, though, and time after time it comes back to the image of a sword branded on Regina’s inner thigh. She tells herself it’s a tattoo, that sometimes people get them just for the hell of it, but she instinctively knows it isn’t. There had been a strange jolt when her lips had brushed against it.

She knows she shouldn’t say anything, but it’s like there’s a force compelling her to speak. “You know, I don’t have a soulmark,” Emma says slowly. “And the funny thing is, you have two.” She’s seen the horseshoe on Regina’s forearm; everyone has. She wears it openly, defiantly, like a scar she expects the world to comment on.

She’d thought Regina was safe. Someone without a soulmate, just like her. But it turns out she was wrong and as she frantically tries to do the sums to understand what that might mean for her, Regina seems to finally understand what she’s saying.

“Get out.” Regina’s voice is like the crack of a whip and Emma shies away instinctively.

“Regina…” Emma starts, but she doesn’t get to finish whatever plea she might have eventually decided on.

“I said, get out!”

She gathers her clothes, throwing them on quickly, not really caring that her buttons are half-undone. She chances one more look back at Regina, but her face is a stony and Emma knows she’s ruined everything.

She doesn’t hear from Regina for three whole weeks.

*****

Regina’s in a strange mood tonight. There’s something almost dangerous about her and it’s the first time Emma’s ever really had a sense that all the whispers about her might actually be true.

“Have you ever held a human heart in your hands?” she asks, as they’re lying together in Emma’s single bed.

“They don’t usually let arts majors near the anatomy labs,” Emma says drily.

“Not like that.” Regina shakes her head. “I mean a heart that’s still beating. One where you’ve reached into someone’s chest, plucked it out and you cradle their life in your hands.”

“And how exactly do you do that, without sneaking in to open heart surgery?” Emma asks, more than a little confused about where this is going.

“Magic,” Regina says, with an enigmatic smile.

“Magic, huh? Why don’t you show me?” Emma says, laughing, because Regina’s mood is kind of infectious and also because she’s more than a little relieved to see her again after three weeks of radio silence.

“Maybe I will. But first…” Regina reaches down between their bodies and strokes a teasing path through the wetness between her legs. And Emma draws a shuddering breath, her hips arcing up to meet Regina’s hand, because she’s spent much of the evening drinking in Regina’s pleasure and the memory of that is now feeding her own.

There’s an intensity there tonight that Emma’s not sure she’s ever felt between them. She’s not sure if it means that Regina’s forgiven her entirely or whether she’s being punished still. Either way it feels far too good to concern herself with the details now, so instead she focuses on Regina’s fingers filling her, fucking her with an almost mechanical rhythm, thumb grazing her clit and drawing her higher with every stroke.

She holds herself there for as long as she can, because three weeks without this has felt like an eternity and she doesn’t know when this will happen again. But there’s only so long she can hang from a precipice, because then she’s falling, falling, falling, lost in the tumult below.

And just as she finally gasps out her pleasure there’s a strange moment when it feels like Regina’s reaching into her chest and she can feel a warm hand, gentle around her heart.

She opens her eyes and there’s an odd red glow bathing the room. The light is coming from Regina’s hand and with it, Emma can see the sudden look of shock that crosses Regina’s face. As she watches, Regina’s hand tightens partway into a fist and the brightness dims.  

For a moment, she feels herself choking and then Regina’s hand is thrusting back into her chest and she can breathe again.

“I have to go,” Regina stutters out, panic informing every one of her movements. She’s normally so cool, so deliberate in everything she does and Emma can’t quite reconcile this image with what she’s come to know of Regina.

She wants to ask, but she’s still too occupied gasping in air, trying to fill lungs that feel wrung out and she doesn’t have the strength to ask Regina what just happened, or to stop her from leaving.

Red comes home a while later and Emma’s still lying there trying to pull herself together.

“What did she do to you?”

And Emma can’t answer her, because nothing seems to make any sense at all. Red sighs and pulls the covers up around Emma’s shoulders before turning the light off.

*****

Regina knocks on her door a couple of mornings later. It’s strange seeing her in the light of day, because Emma’s used to being summoned late at night with an imperious text message.

She seems smaller, somehow, and that impression’s only reinforced by the way she pulls her coat tighter around herself, even though it’s not actually that cold.

“Can we talk?” Regina asks. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

Emma hesitates, because Ruby’s warnings are ringing in her ears right now, and there’s the small matter of whatever it was that had happened last time they’d been together.

But Regina seems so small and so distinctly unthreatening right now that Emma shrugs and follows her to a café just off campus.

She sits down opposite Regina and folds her arms, because whatever explanation Regina comes up with had better be good.

“What the hell was that thing you did the other night? Was that some kind of hologram? Did you drug me and make me hallucinate?”

“You really don’t believe in magic, do you?” Regina says, looking at her with something like wonder.

Emma rolls her eyes, because it seems like everyone around here wants to talk to her about make-believe garbage. “Well, I’m pretty sure David Copperfield isn’t a figment of our collective imaginations. Unfortunately.”

Regina sighs. “I’m not talking about parlour games and cheap trickery. I’m talking about magic. Like the kind that marks our souls as being for one person only. Like the kind that turns your roommate into a werewolf three days out of the month.”

Emma frowns at that, ready to argue, even though somehow it almost sounds like the truth. She’s still trying to decide what to say when Regina continues speaking.

“And,” Regina says heavily, “like the kind that let me take your heart from your chest and hold it in my hand.” She puts her head in her hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She’s still not quite ready to accept what Regina seems to be suggesting, so she seizes on another thing that’s been bothering her.

“Why did you run out like that?”

Regina doesn’t answer her question. “Can I tell you a story?” Regina asks instead, biting her lip, and she seems vulnerable in a way that Emma doesn’t remember ever seeing before.

“Sure. Why not?” Emma says, because maybe she’ll get some kind of answers at last, even if they’re not the ones she came here looking for.

It takes Regina a while to speak and when she does, her voice is so soft at first that Emma has to strain to hear her.

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl who grew up in a big house full of beautiful things. She had everything she might ever have wanted for and servants to see to her every need, but the one thing she didn’t have was the love of her mother. Her mother, you see, was a cruel, cold-hearted woman who had no love for any other than herself and so the child wilted like a seedling without sunlight.

“For many years, she suffered, unloved and unnourished, holding on only out of sheer stubbornness, until one day she met a boy with a horseshoe tattoo on his right shoulder. The boy was handsome and good and made her feel like there was light in the world where there had only ever been dark.

“She resolved to run away with him, to escape that loveless house and make a new future, one full of love and light and laughter and escape she almost did.

“It wasn’t meant to be, though. Her mother found out and she was furious, more violently angry than she had ever been before. The girl was terrified, knowing what her mother was capable of, and she turned the boy away, so that at least one of them might be safe.”

Regina breaks off there and there are silent tears running down her face.

“I never saw him again. Daniel died by the side of the road believing I didn’t care about him.”

Regina rolls up the sleeve of her blouse and runs her fingers over the horseshoe mark, tracing it out ever so carefully. Emma can’t help the momentary pang of jealousy she feels that the boy – _Daniel_ – had known Regina’s love, even so briefly. She feels sick at herself, because Regina’s grief is palpable and here she is getting caught up in her own selfish wants.

“I’m sorry,” is all Emma manages to say. She doesn’t know what else she _can_ say to that, because the magnitude of Regina’s loss feels bigger than the earth and anything she could say would seem insignificant in the face of it.

“The workmanship is so good you’d have to have an exceptional eye to know that it’s not genuine,” Regina says, almost conversationally, even though there are still tears tracking down her cheeks. “I got it just before I came here, where no one knows me, and it’s been good enough to fool everyone who’s ever laid eyes on it.”

Emma frowns and it takes her a moment to understand exactly what Regina’s revealing. “He wasn’t your soulmate,” she finally says.

“He wasn’t. He deserved better than me, but I was all he ever had. And somewhere out there, there’s another person with a horseshoe looking for their missing half.”

“It seems kind of cruel to wear his mark that way,” Emma says gently.

“Maybe,” Regina admits. “But at least this way, I could hide my real soulmark. And it’s always there as a reminder of what I took from him.”

“Why would you do that? What if there’s someone out there looking for _you_.” Emma can’t help but be caught up in the injustice of it all. Here she is, a half without a whole, and it turns out Regina’s been running from her own soulmate, throwing away everything that Emma wishes she could have.

“I was always so certain they’d be better off without me.”

“What if they aren’t? What if they’re spending their nights dreaming of you and their days searching for you, wondering if they’ll ever find their missing piece?”

Regina doesn’t answer, and Emma wonders how she can be so unmoved by the thought of her soulmate, lost and searching to no avail.

Instead, Regina says, “You told me you didn’t have a soulmark. The truth is, I already knew about you. You’re something of a curiosity around here and I always intended to seek you out.” Regina smiles a little wryly. “Somehow, you found me first, though.”

And Emma can’t deny that there had been a pull there. Every one of Red’s warnings had fallen on deaf ears, even though when she’s come across people like Regina before, she’s always found a way to safety. But with Regina, she’d known she was throwing herself headlong into danger and she’d embraced it.

Nonetheless, there’s also a kind of resentment there and she can’t quite keep herself from expressing it. “I don’t understand you. I’ve spent my whole life wishing I could be like everyone else, but I never will be.” That had been a bitter lesson she’d had to swallow over and over again, from the time she was a child, right up until now. It wasn’t just the lack of a soulmark; it was also a series of foster homes that left her more and more certain that she was not made to be loved. “I’ll never be like everyone else, but you could be, if you’d just try.”

Regina shakes her head. “I’ve spent the last few years certain I didn’t deserve any measure of happiness. And I was so determined never to look for him or her. Which is why this whole thing is so dreadfully ironic.”

Regina’s looking at her now and there are so many things brimming up behind her eyes that Emma can’t even begin to read her. “You told me you didn’t have a soulmark,” she says, echoing her earlier words.

“I don’t,” and Emma’s a little annoyed that Regina seems determined to rub it in, because it’s not like she’s going to forget about what she’s lacking any time soon.

“The thing is, maybe it’s not where just _anyone_ can see it. Not on your hand, your back, your ankle, your thigh. Maybe it’s hidden where no one can see it, not even you.” Regina reaches out and takes her hand and even though she thinks she probably should, Emma doesn’t reject the touch.

“Emma, I held your heart in my hand and I saw my mark reflected back at me,” Regina says softly, holding her gaze. “I tried so hard not to look for it, but somehow you found me anyway and I don’t want to fight this anymore.” There’s a wry smile with that that Emma can’t help answering with one of her own.

Regina reaches out and places a hand on her chest, just above her heart. And Emma can feel her heart, feel the growing warmth of it instinctively answering the truth in Regina’s words. Then Regina’s leaning forward to kiss her and she’s already moving, desperate to close what little distance remains.

When their lips finally meet, it’s _everything_ , and she feels like an ember coaxed into life, suddenly all ablaze. She can taste the remnants of salt on Regina’s lips and kisses her again and again until it’s only a memory and they’re both bathed in brightness.


End file.
